Healthcare doesn’t just happen in hospitals.

It happens in people’s homes, at schools, in neighborhoods, and through the partnerships we forge. It’s why the official launch a new UVA Health Mobile Care Unit, which will use data-driven approaches and be staffed by School and UVA Health clinicians, paramedics, and, ultimately, nursing students, is so exciting, said Randy Jones (BSN ’00, MSN ’02, PhD ’05).

“This is why we do what we do.”

Assistant professor Amy Boitnott

“We have a history of being embedded in the community,” said Jones, associate dean for partner development and engagement, who compared the mobile health unit to the School’s long-standing presence in and support for the Westhaven Nursing Clinic, which is embedded in one of Charlottesville’s oldest and most dense communities. “In fact, it’s often the people and places in our surrounding community beyond the hospital walls where students remember, learn, and flourish the most.”

The four-wheeled unit’s work importantly touches three of four of the School’s strategic plan goals, including transforming educational offerings, goal 1, co-creating and enhancing partnerships to improve health and healthcare, goal 2, and cultivating trust and equity in all that we do, goal 4. Powered by UVA Health RNs, paramedics, patient access specialists, financial assistance team members, and interpreter services, the van’s work also dovetails with other important UVA Health efforts, like the UVA Latino Health Initiative, as well as Charlottesville organizations like Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville and the Boys and Girls Club.

It's also created another way for the School, its nurses, and, soon, nursing students, to show up in a community where they’re already familiar faces.

Assistant professor Amy Boitnott (DNP ’11) is one of those faces. The long-time family nurse practitioner provides care from the van each week when it arrives at Southwood, and soon plans to teach both undergraduate and graduate nursing students aboard the new vehicle, which was purchased with a $350,000 federal HRSA grant.

While Boitnott noted that she doesn't speak Spanish, which is often the preferred language for patients from Southwood, she does "speak care and compassion,” which is “universal.”

“This,” said Boitnott to the small crowd assembled at the ribbon cutting, “is why we do what we do.”